Portraits of our Father - Luke 15 - Part Three

The second story (parable) Jesus threw alongside of the theme of God receiving sinners, is the story of the woman and the lost coin.  Just like with the shepherds, these Jews did not like the idea of a religious man using a woman as the main focus of the story.  Women were second-class citizens, at best, in their world and, just like the shepherds, were not permitted inside the Temple for worship.

In this story, a woman loses one silver coin.  The coin was a drachma, equivalent to one day's worth of wages.  Thus, the sum of money lost was relatively modest.  She would not go without food or shelter due to the loss of this one coin, yet she was not content to do without even this small amount until she finds it.

She sweeps her entire house clean, not resting until she has searched it completely to find this lost coin.  We would say in our modern day, she looked in the couches, under the bed, and turned every drawer upside down to find this lost coin.  Maybe someone even chided her that she was wasting more time than the coin was worth.

Then she finds it and she calls her neighbors to celebrate.  

What does this story tell us about our Father?  The missing coin is me and you - lost without Jesus Christ.  We might not be considered to be very valuable to others - I mean there are over 7.8 billion of us on this planet right now.  What is one?

Does God need us?  Someone once said God was incomplete without us causing him to search and love us.  Are you kidding?  God is not incomplete and lacking anything whether I am a believer or not.

But to our Father, what may be insignificant to others is very precious and valuable to Him.  God puts value on lost sinners that He searches for them to save them even though He does not need them.

And the length to which the woman went to find the coin reminds us of the great lengths Jesus went to find and redeem sinners.  He came from Heaven to Earth, took the form of a man, humbled Himself to be a servant, and gave Himself to death.  

And it still happens, when He finds the lost sinner, all the angels in heaven erupt into great joy.  

Our Father values lost sinners.

If you would like to read all nine sermons I preached from Luke 15 in 2016, simply click here.